Posted on 07/26/2006 1:40:54 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. soldiers arrested five suspected members of an alleged "death squad" south of Baghdad on Wednesday as Iraqi army troops battled insurgents on a major street in the center of the capital.
In Washington, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told Congress that Iraq was a front line in the war on terrorism and said those behind the violence here are perverting Islam.
The arrests occurred when troops of the 101st Airborne Division swept through a neighborhood in Mahmoudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, a U.S. statement said. The five suspects included the team leader, the statement said.
Tensions have been running high in Mahmoudiya since July 17, when dozens of suspected Sunni gunmen killed about 50 people and wounded more than 90, most of them Shiites.
Four days later, Iraqi soldiers backed by a U.S. helicopter killed five gunmen in what U.S. officials said was a move against death squads. Six Iraqi security troopers also were killed.
U.S. officials believe control of Baghdad — the political, cultural, transport and economic hub of the country — will determine the future of Iraq. But the city's religiously mixed communities have become the focus of sectarian violence.
The U.S. statement did not say whether the suspected death squad members arrested Wednesday were Sunnis or Shiites. Shiite militiamen of the Mahdi Army and Sunni insurgents from groups affiliated with al-Qaida in Iraq operate in the religiously mixed city.
Clashes broke out after sundown on Haifa street, located near the U.S.-controlled Green Zone, between Iraqi soldiers and insurgents, the army said. Six insurgents were killed and 27 were detained, including some non-Iraqi Arabs, the army said.
A steady rise in violence since al-Maliki's government took office May 20 has drawn new attention to sectarian militias and death squads, whose tit-for-tat killings have raised fears the country may be unraveling.
Much of the violence has occurred in greater Baghdad in what U.S. officials have described as a "must-win" battle between militants and the new government for the future of Iraq. The U.S. military plans to move American and Iraq forces from other areas in the country to keep the capital from descending into chaos.
In Washington, al-Maliki told a joint session of Congress that his government was committed to defeating its adversaries and abolishing the sectarian militias responsible for fueling the violence.
"I know some of you question whether Iraq is part of the war on terror," al-Maliki said. "Let me be very clear. This is a battle between true Islam, for which a person's liberty and rights constitute essential cornerstones, and terrorism, which wraps itself in a fake Islamic cloak."
Several bombings and shootings were reported in Baghdad and elsewhere, although the violence appeared lower than last week.
A car bomb injured 15 people in the northern oil center of Kirkuk, police said. It was the fifth car bomb there this month as tensions between the city's Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen rise.
A roadside bomb exploded on an Iraqi army patrol near Karmah, 25 miles west of Baghdad, killing four soldiers, police Lt. Ahmed Ali said.
Two brothers serving in Iraq's police force died when a bomb blew up their vehicle as they drove to the Baghdad suburb of Nahrawan, police Lt. Bilal Ali Majid said.
Gunmen abducted a senior Interior Ministry official, Gen. Abdullah Hmoud, as he rode in an unmarked car in Baghdad, police said.
A senior officer in the police unit that protects oil installations was slain in west Baghdad, police reported.
Police found two unidentified bodies of men in their 20s in the Baladiyat area of eastern Baghdad. Both were blindfolded and shot in the head, police Capt. Haidar Ibrahim said.
A policeman was killed while leaving a barber shop in the northern city of Mosul, and a supermarket owned was slain in another part of town, police there said.
In Kut, officials said about 2,480 families — or 14,900 people — have fled three religiously mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad in recent weeks for Wasit province, a mostly Shiite area southeast of the capital.
The province has long served as a refuge for Shiites in Baghdad who feel threatened by sectarian violence.
Good. Only a few thousand to go, I suspect...
A few thousands of girls to rape you mean, I suspect?
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